Home automation and control refers to the use of computer and information technology to control home systems, such as lighting; heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC); audio-visual; smoke detection; security; and sunlight shading. Using specialized hardware, even household appliances such as coffeemakers can be monitored and controlled automatically. A feature of science fiction for many years, home automation has only recently become practical in some aspects, both from a technological and cost perspective. This is due to the rapid advancement of information technology.
A home automation and control system (hereinafter “home automation system”) in the prior art can include i) sensor devices configured to monitor conditions such as temperature, light, motion detection, and so on, ii) actor devices to control devices such as motorized valves, switches, and so on, and iii) some control logic. The system also can include a human-machine interface device that enables someone, such as a resident of the home or an occupant of a building, to interact with the system. The interface is typically a specialized, dedicated terminal or an application (“app”) running on a smartphone or tablet computer. The various sensor, actor, and interface devices communicate over dedicated wiring, or over a wired network, or wirelessly, using one or more protocols.
The sensor devices that are present in a home automation system typically sense one or more conditions such as motion, temperature, light, humidity, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, standing water, rain, and smoke. A home automation system having such sensor devices present is able to trigger certain events, such as turning on lights with motion detection, controlling HVAC systems, and so on.
Some household appliances, such as the coffeemaker mentioned earlier, perform a specific task, such as brewing coffee, and use a consumable good, such as a coffee cartridge. In some cases, the household appliance is able to report a status to a second device, such as to a smartphone running an app that is related to the appliance being monitored. In some cases, a person can use a surrogate device to transmit a status to the second device, on behalf of the household appliance. For example, a WiFi-enabled device with a pushbutton is available that can be affixed, via a magnet, to a water cooler or other nearby appliance. When a person wants to reorder bottled water, she presses the button on the WiFi-enabled device, causing the device to transmit a preconfigured signal over the Internet to the water supplier.
Home automation systems in the prior art are typically based on peer-to-peer network architectures that include the sensor or actor devices mentioned earlier. Sensor devices transmit information, such that the information can be acted upon. For example, a sensor detects a button being pushed, propagates this information such that a light module receives it, which turns on electrical current to a light bulb as a result. Similarly, the status-reporting device described above typically transmits a message to a predetermined recipient, which usually is an app at a smartphone or is a computer system of the business entity that provided the reporting device to their customer in the first place. In this case, if a sensor at a household device detects a low-supply condition or, alternatively, detects a button being pushed as in the example described above, the device propagates this information by using a predetermined network address for the intended recipient, wherein the network address corresponds to a server computer of the business entity associated with the device.